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This paper investigates how stockist brand equity is created in the unorganized pharma retail sector in emerging markets despite the absence of any proactive brand-building efforts by distribution firms (stockists). In addition, this study also aims to unravel the sources of stockist brand equity.

Drawing from grounded theory, a qualitative research design using semi-structured interviews was conducted, and a theoretical saturation approach was used for this purpose. The retailer–stockist (business-to-business [B2B]) relationship in the Indian pharmaceutical market context was used as the study context.

The findings show that in the absence of any brand-building activities, stockists’ sales representatives play an important role in creating stockist brand awareness. In addition, word of mouth from other retailers also plays a minor role. Rational and emotional brand associations which are strong, favorable and unique are created 1) directly by the services provided by stockists, which includes product availability, deliverability, accuracy in billing and batch numbers, credit facilities and discounts, handling issues such as product expiry, and 2) indirectly by the services provided by stockists’ sales representatives which includes their frequency of visits, proactive customer orientation rather than sales orientation, fulfilling commitments and relationship with retailers. The strength of the retailer–stockist (B2B) relationship also depends on retailer-driven factors and other external factors discussed in this study.

Strong stockist brand equity helps build trust and loyalty with pharmacies, ensuring a consistent and timely supply of medicinal products, which will benefit their end consumers or society.

This study identifies the antecedents determining the strength of the retailer–stockist (B2B) relationship, a precursor for establishing retailer-based stockist brand equity in the unorganized sector. This study also highlights the consequences of establishing strong retailer-based stockist brand equity.

There is growing recognition that transformation of healthcare systems towards health and well-being systems requires a continuous learning process. This explorative study aims to gain insight into the experiences with and investment in these learning processes within regional partnerships for health and in what they need to enhance their learning capacity to use the learning for transformation.

17 interviews were held with programme managers, data scientists, trusted advisors and a citizen representative, all involved in the learning process on a regional level in ten Dutch regional partnerships. The interviews were inductively and thematically analysed, focusing on the experiences and perceptions underlying the learning processes.

Regional partnerships invest in learning processes by organizing interactions between different groups of stakeholders and by reflecting on specific themes or on a region-wide level. Difficulty was found in region-wide reflection and in enhancing the learning capacity within the partnerships. Further enhancing the learning capacity required: (1) Investment in (the use of) expertise for translating learning outcomes into concrete action; (2) Leadership for change, underpinned by a shared sense of urgency to learn for transformation and (3) A facilitative environment for change which is both based on facilitative system structures and a basis of trust and commitment to learn and adapt.

The study highlighted the difficulty of learning on a region-wide level and the struggle to apply this learning for transformation. It provides insights into how learning processes and learning capacity can be further improved.